Last weekend my life turned a corner… correction, my crusade for a hyperglossed online representation of my life turned a corner. Berlin had won the Most Photogenic City as part of Samsung’s Life’s a Photo social campaign around the new Samsung Galaxy Camera, and I was part of 45 bloggers that were invited out in celebration. Guys, this camera changes nothing, and absolutely everything – I’m having a whole new instagramming experience with this. See, I’ll still pause a perfectly civil dinner to do Taichi moves over the food with an image-capturing device, but those photos will be crisp and juicy in colour. I’ll still look like a complete douche-baguette fondling my phone at the dinner table but this time I’ll be editing my photos instead of flipping between filters that make the chocolate dessert look like cold poop, or hot poop. I will still get pinched nerves on my shoulder thanks to weight in cameras (nothing replaces the Canon beast), but I’ll have agility with this beauty tucked in my sleeve. And get this, I will still overshare the mundane things of my life, but I may or may not use the 21x zoom to shoot the better looking food across the room because haven’t you heard, bragging about stuff that ain’t yours is the next level, yo. See – nothing, yet EVERYTHING.

On an unrelated note, and I’ve spoken about this before, there it was again – the odd sense of comfort when travelling with a bunch of bloggers where an eyebrow shrug towards a corner means outfit shots, now, and collectively tackling snow in four inch heels until we’re reduced to communicating in 140-character grunts, mostly using words like feet, hurt, hungry, cold, hotel. There were many, many bloggers/photographers/instagrammers (I’ve never seen that many MEN in a press trip) at this event and at the end of the day we were inevitably sat around a round table having to make small talk and seem normal. Of course, being bloggers and inherently introverts – we all kept our head dipped and noses in this amazing new apparatus, affixing clip-art party hats on photos of eachother using the editing software, silently laughing at jokes that was never heard past the salt & pepper shaker point on the table. The waitress thought we were in group-prayer for the entire evening. Best party ever, really.

Shelving Disneyland and Paris for now – and I’m aware this shelf is still full with unfulfilled promises of Part Two‘s of supposedly fantastical adventures (i.e Azerbaijan and Kew Gardens), but I suppose now they will have to get cozy on the IKEA Billys until I run out of topics to entertain my guests (you) and then soon enough I’ll start pulling out photo-albums and first-editions from the bookshelf at an attempt to impress. I kind of wish I have a fancy chandelier instead.

Ironically, I’d mentioned that Berlin to me was like Disneyland when I was a teenager – a faraway land where all dreams come true… or in other words anywhere but home where curfew is 10pm, parties start at 11 and mother leaves 12 missed calls while you’re dancing. A faraway land with lots of light and a vibrant music culture, preferably. So when I landed in Berlin courtesy of Zalando I was hit by excitement, nostalgia and a tinge of giddiness, but shock to the system, too. I was quickly realizing I’d actually grown out of popular music (is Katy Perry still kissing girls?) and was finding all the graffiti more disconcerting than amusing – probably sharing inner-boiling sentiments of an old German lady living on the second floor of a freshly graffiti-ed compound. But as Carrie and I lost ourselves on an expedition to find the Brandenburg gate for touring’s sake we kept running into unexpected, awesome nooks that diverted us even further off the beaten track. It takes a while to understand, that you need to stop comparing the city to Paris or London at some point and from then on it becomes a completely new experience. The grunge and the architectural disorderliness are simply products of the rich history of Berlin, as if it’s all embedded in the buildings and streets, now how charismatic is that.

Guten tag meine Kindereggs! …I just offended somebody’s grandma, didn’t I? I’m thinking I can take this post down two different paths – either one that involves a lot of 9th grade German-class related stories (i.e Ich bin ein Toilettenpapier, bitte? BITTE!? Translation: May I please go to the toilet and avoid answering whatever question you just threw at me) or I can be an adult and tell you how I’ve had the lovely opportunity to visit Berlin. Second option it is, but not because I’d like to be serious for a change, I think I just used all the German I know in the above example…
Growing up, Berlin to me was Disneyland, Hogwarts, and Never-neverland where the lights were multi-neon and the long-haired rollerbladers at the banks of the Seine were the emperors of dance. This is the time when MTV actually played music videos and teenage emotions oscillated with weekly charts and highly coveted ringtones, only purchasable through mobile phones that only kids with Nokia parents owned. The ‘internet’ was but a series of muffled bleeps from the Forbidden Box and I was a 13 year old kid living in Warsaw, alienated by the locals and wanting to ring the Y2K at a music festival in Berlin. So it was with glee that I accepted to fly to see the launch of Zalando’s new collection, if only to have a proper taste of the brand but also to finally attempt at experiencing the teenage dream never fulfilled. Here’s part one – snippets of arrival with travel-buddy Carrie and the evening of the collection launch. More of the city to come in Part Two!